


Field Surgery

by Fuinixe



Series: Febuwhump 2021 [17]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Historical References, Hurt Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentioned Andy | Andromache of Scythia, Mentioned Booker | Sebastien le Livre, POV Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Pre-Canon, Referenced historical child death, Referenced historical mosque attack, Terrorism, Violence, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-14 05:49:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29537781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuinixe/pseuds/Fuinixe
Summary: Nicky steps on a land mine in Sri Lanka.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Febuwhump 2021 [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2143242
Comments: 10
Kudos: 143
Collections: febuwhump 2021





	Field Surgery

Sri Lanka  
August 1990

Joe had a lot to complain about at the moment, but at least the weather was decent.

It was hot, but not unbearably so, and he was dressed appropriately for the humidity. 

Okay, great. That was one thing to be grateful for. No, two! The clothes counted for two. What else was there?

Well, he wasn’t alone. He had his family with him. That was never something to take for granted.

Everything else…well, everything else about this situation was pretty awful, frankly.

They’d heard about the Kattankudy mosque massacre two days ago and had flown out for Sri Lanka almost immediately. There was nothing they could do for all the men and boys who’d been slaughtered, but they could evacuate their wives and mothers, their sisters and daughters-–the ones who wanted to leave, anyway–-there were many countries they’d be able to claim refugee status in, now.

First, they had to get them across this cursed island that was covered in land mines and IEDs. Which was why they were currently escorting a long line of freshly grieving widows and a smattering of children, walking slowly, single-file, while mosquitoes ate them alive.

“I am going first,” Nicky had proclaimed, calmly, as if it were a foregone conclusion.

Joe had objected, of course, and Andy had forestalled the whole argument by making them flip a coin for it. She and Booker were bringing up the end of the line. Joe wished, not for the first time, that they had another person or two…it would make so many missions so much easier…

While he was wishing for things he had no control over, he thought ruefully, why not wish that nobody had ever invented land mines? Or civil wars, for that matter? Terrorism as an entire concept?

Behind Joe was the first Sri Lankan in the line, named Bhakti. Ahead of Joe, thirty feet away, in case he activated anything, was Nicky. 

Nicky crept forward steadily, and Joe tracked his movements closely, not only for the usual reasons, but because veering off the path Nicky was laying out meant potential death for him or the women behind him. 

Joe adjusted his grip on his rifle and went back to searching for positives in this situation.

If all went according to plan, they’d board a boat with the women at around midnight tonight. They could be back in a nice hotel in under four days. That wasn’t too long, as missions went. And then he could take his time “punishing” Nicky for winning that coinflip…

One moment, Joe was treading across bent grass, listening to the chattering of hornbills and magpies and the faint rustle of Bhakti’s skirts behind him, and the next, an explosion thirty feet ahead of them ripped through the air, causing screams and shouts of alarm down the line. Joe suppressed his initial instinct ruthlessly and instead turned to Bhakti, whose hands were covering her mouth in horror. 

“Don’t move. Stay. Pass words down the line,” he ordered in his limited Sinhala, and waited for her to nod in agreement.

Then he did as his instincts were screaming at him to do, and ran for Nicky, or what was left of him. 

He dropped to his knees in the torn-up earth and cupped his husband’s face, trying not to look at the jagged edges of where his upper body just…ended, right around his stomach, a jagged, misshapen wrongness of empty air where his lower abdomen should have been, streaming blood and leaking organs. Bits of him were scattered around them, flung about like trash. 

Nicky wasn’t conscious ( _Yet,_ Joe thought. _Yet_ ) and the parts of him that remained sported ugly entrance wounds where shrapnel had torn into him and stopped when they ran out of momentum. Joe couldn’t bear to keep his hands still, waiting for Nicky to wake up, and busied himself trying to pick the fragmented metal out, but the pieces were slippery with blood and twisted cruelly into Nicky’s flesh. Joe wiped his hands off on his thighs, pulled off his pack and unzipped the bottom compartment, wrenching out the medical kit within and unzipping it further, digging for the compartment with the tweezers.

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I’ve got you,” he murmured, nonsensically, to the dead body in front of him, just to steady himself. Just to make a noise that wasn’t screaming. He used one hand to hold the torn edges of flesh open and the other to maneuver the tweezers to start picking out explosive fragments from Nicky’s body. The faster these came out, the faster Nicky’s body could focus all its energy on regenerating his lower half. 

He was focused intently on a particularly fussy fragment embedded in Nicky’s shoulder when Nicky’s eyes flew open and he let out a long, agonized groan through clenched teeth. Nicky’s hand flew up to Joe’s upper arm and squeezed painfully tight. Joe didn’t let his grip slip, but his eyes flickered over to Nicky’s, taking in the whites visible all around his irises and the pinprick pupils. The flesh under Joe’s hands started regrowing at the edges, around the wound Joe’s tweezers were currently embedded in, and Joe tugged insistently at the metal. Nicky whimpered and clenched Joe’s arm tighter, but he didn’t let up. “I’m so sorry darling, I have to get this out–-”

Nicky nodded tightly. Joe kept talking while his hands worked, trying to give Nicky a stream of words to focus on. “It’ll be over soon, sweetheart, just wait and see. This will be over and you’ll be nice and whole and we’ll get off this awful, shitty island. I promise, it’ll be over so fast. You won’t even know it, won’t even remember this stupid day or this godforsaken land mine. I’ll say, ‘Hey Nicolò, remember that time you won a coin toss and got blown up?’ And you’ll say to me, ‘No, my love, I can’t recall, it all happened so fast. But maybe I should let you win the coin flips from now on, just in case?’” 

The corner of Nicky’s mouth twitched, a small concession to his typical laugh whenever Joe tried to imitate his voice. Joe successfully wrenched the shoulder shrapnel out and dropped it on the ground beside them, then immediately shifted to removing the next piece of metal, desperate to get it out before it was fully embedded under Nicky’s skin. Joe kept talking.

“We’ll leave this island and all its mosquitoes behind and we’ll go to somewhere temperate. We haven’t visited the Seychelles in a while, do you think that sounds nice? Just imagine that lovely air caressing your face. We’ll eat ladob with ripe plantain and drink coconut cream with rum and just laze about on the beach all day.” He continued in this vein for the next several minutes, chattering to Nicky, and wishing more fervently than ever that he could wish certain things completely out of existence: like terrorism, and civil wars, and land mines.

**Author's Note:**

> My apologies for the somewhat abrupt ending, but it is hard churning one of these out every day and I'm trying to get better about going to bed on time! I hope you all are enjoying them!


End file.
